The family as subversive institution: an interview with Nancy McDermott

How the hyper-intensive, performative parenting norms of the last 3 decades created cancel culture -- and how to break free

For all of my childhood and much of my adulthood, I associated the phrase “family values” with right-wing Christian nut jobs who voted for Ronald Reagan and threw money at weeping televangelists. 

Ah, how times have changed. I’m not saying I would vote for Reagan if he were around today, or that I have suddenly become partial to a bit of TV preaching. But I do feel — strongly — that it is time to reclaim the family, before we slide any further down the chose-your-own-gender, reality-offends-me, normal-life-gave-me-PTSD rabbit hole. In this Nancy McDermott, American writer and associate at the Centre for Parenting Culture Studies at the University of Kent, agrees with me.

In liberal circles of the English-speaking West, childrearing is broken. It’s been broken for at least two generations, if not three. And while there has never been a perfect family, or a perfect society made up of perfect families, in attempting to fix the real cruelties of the past we have also thrown out all that was good about it. Turns out, that has cost us. It has cost our children. (If you don’t believe me, just a quick look at the insanity of TikTok should make it clear.) I don’t know how to fix it, or what it will cost us if we don’t, but the very least we can do is talk about it.

So that’s what I did, with the bold Jodi Shaw and the wise Nancy McDermott. In that conversation, Nancy says that in our current woke, orthodox society, the family may be the most subversive institution around. We need reclaim and stabilise our kith and kin if we want to recapture some of our collective sanity.

You can watch the full interview here:

It is my view that a parent should work towards making themselves obsolete. Not so their child can leave and never come back. But so the child can grow into a functioning adult who can raise sane and happy and healthy children of their own. As a mother, I don’t think there exists for me a higher goal than this. No fame or fortune or professional regard ranks above it.

Childrearing is also a process that connects the past with the future. The whole-scale repudiation of past mores, first by Boomer parents and then by parents of my generation, has severed that connection. As a result we have lost all of our natural instincts.

Nancy’s book, The Problem with Parenting, ends with a description of her and her husband bringing their son on a college tour. It’s a lovely rendering of the telescoping of time that occurs when you see your child enter into a new phase of life. 

She writes:

“Childhood is the start of a journey into the future, and our role as parents changes along the way. In the beginning, we carry them, then we lead them, we walk beside them, and then finally we watch them walk off to a place where we cannot follow.

After we escape our backward-walking tour guide, we head off across campus with our son. We chat about his impressions and how this college compares to the last one he visited. It seems like yesterday that he was just a baby. He wants to go back and look at the Quad before we leave, or maybe he’s just tired of listening to his parents reminisce. He instructs us to meet him back at the car. We pause to watch him stride off and disappear into a crowd of students, fighting the urge to follow. One day soon, we will leave without him — and that is ok.”